As anybody who has owned a truck can attest, once your friends find out, they’ll recruit you to haul anything and everything. Like a few wrecks, a boat, a tree stump, a house, or another boat. As we see from these photos from the Louis L. McAllister collection on the University of Vermont’s Center for Digital Initiatives, Hope and Son of Burlington, Vermont, was called on in the early 1950s to haul all those things and more on the back of their Chevrolet COE.

While we’d normally track down the location of Hope and Son’s garage in Burlington, we’ve had no luck finding an address for the intrepid hauler. Anybody recognize the building?

10 Responses to “Hope and Son – we haul it all”

Some neat old photos. Those are some nasty looking wrecks! most of them don’t look too survivable.

There’s an old cabover Chevy grain truck about a mile down the road from me,.. a ’52, with it’s nose poking out of the barn. I made a deal with the guy that owns it, but before I could go pick it up and pay him, my wife had to go in for surgery, which put a stop to the deal. But the truck is still sitting there waiting.

Hope & Son started out as Hope Sign Services around 1927 at 228 – 234 Elmwood Ave., Burlington, Vermont. It began providing much more about 1931 when it advertised Hope Sign Service, Clarence Hope Proprietor, sign painting, automobile painting, body and fender repairing and outdoor advertising (still at the same location). The name changed the following year to Hope Auto Painting, Signs, Body & Fender Service, and then again in 1937 to Hope Auto Body and Sign Services, and by 1941 it was known simply as Hope Auto Body and Sign Service.

The exact year that this became Hope and Son is hard to determine, but this change definitely took place by 1949. Around the same time the location changed to 764 Shelburne. It remained there until at least 1962.

Clarence Hope had two sons. Leon Hope definitely worked in the business, but he is also shown as working at Shearer Chevrolet and at L&L Auto Body (named for him and his wife Llevaine). Guy Hope also worked at Shearer Chevrolet and as a gas station attendant.